I Prequalified for a Mortgage -- and Almost Instantly Regretted It

One email is helpful; six is harassment.

After being a renter for my entire adult life, I'm finally at a place where I'm considering buying a home. But when I say "considering," I mean it. I'm in the earliest possible stage of home buying, where I'm not even sure it's what I want to do.

At this stage, getting pre-approved for a mortgage would be silly. There's simply no reason to go through a hard credit pull and detailed dive into my finances. After all, I'm still months away from needing a mortgage loan.

But, I still wanted to know a rough estimate of how much I could potentially borrow, if I decide to go this route. Luckily, there's a tool for this: prequalification.

Prequalification versus pre-approval

Essentially, a mortgage prequalification involves a soft credit check and answering a few basic questions about your income and debt obligations. Then you get a very general idea of how much the bank would be willing to lend you.

In contrast, pre-approval typically involves submitting an application, going through a complete credit review, verifying income details, and so on.

Since there shouldn't be any credit score impact, I decided to use my bank's prequalification tool to plug in my numbers and see. Within a few minutes, I had a generous estimate of my potential mortgage limit, and I went on with my day.

That's when it started.

The calls are coming from inside the bank

Little did I know, what I thought was a quick, harmless online tool would lead to instant regret.

It began with an email. One innocuous little email thanking me for using their tool and offering resources for my next steps. Okay, great.

Then there was another email. This one from a mortgage officer letting me know they'd be happy to help with all my mortgage needs. Fine. I guess that could be useful, eventually.

Then came another email from the bank.

Then another, from the same mortgage officer. This one had a subject line in all caps.

Within the first 24 hours of submitting my information into the prequalification checker, I had received no fewer than four emails. (And I'd get another two after that!)

I also received a phone call -- well, a voicemail, since I don't answer unknown numbers -- from that same mortgage officer, once again letting me know they're there for me if I need anything.

That's right. In less than a day, I'd been contacted five times by the bank about my prequalification.

It wasn't an application. It wasn't a preapproval. It was just supposed to be a simple online tool for the broadest information possible. Instead, it felt more like Pandora's Box.

Saying "Go Away!" -- but politely

By this point, I was fed up. So I replied to the mortgage officer's second email politely asking that they remove me from whatever list I had obviously been added to. They responded quickly assuring me that would be the case.

I still received one more email from the bank. But, so far, that's the last of them.

Prequalification is still a great tool*

While I'm obviously not super thrilled with the bombardment that ensued after my prequalification, I'm still a firm believer that it can be a very useful tool. Sure, I regret filling out that form right now. But if I were a little further along in my plans to buy a home, I think the information, and the introduction to a mortgage officer, could have been very useful.

All this to say: Don't be afraid of using a prequalification tool. They can be very handy when you're setting your initial budget and starting to explore your options. But -- and this is a big BUT -- be prepared for some follow-up from the bank. (All right, lots of follow-up from the bank.)